Subj :  Gopher
To   : Kenneth Udut
From : Sam Alexander
Date : Fri Sep 30 2005 11:39 am

  Re:  Gopher
  By: Kenneth Udut to 82BUBBLES on Sat Feb 08 2020 01:42 pm

 > Gopher kicked #SS!
 > 
 > Back in 1990, my first experience with a VAX/VMS Mainframe
 > was first in college (no, I never finished college)
 > 
 > I became the "VAX Guru" in a short period of time, which I'm
 > sure most of you here can relate to - becoming the "Instant Guru"
 > of a technology.
 > 
 > Anyhow, Gopher was amazing for its day, and still.  It seems
 > odd looking now -- and the ONLY way to see gopher nowadays properly
 > is to use:
 > 
 > LYNX
 > 
 > which is the text mode browser available for almost every platform,
 > inluding a delicious version for Win32 which I use instead of
 > IE when I can help it.
 > 
 > But as odd looking as it is, when using Gopher through lynx,
 > you can navigate directories and view files (and even pictures
 > and sounds and the like if you have the associations set up).
 > 
 > It's all console based.  No stinkin' mouse required.
 > 
 > It was clean, consistant, easy as hell to use.
 > 
 > But '93 changed all that with the HTTP protocol, the
 > American Army getting rid of their control over the internet
 > and releasing it to commercial means.
 > 
 > That was the explosion.
 > 
 > Unfortunately for me, the reason I never bothered to learn HTML,
 > even though it's simple enough, is that I still remember being
 > annoyed at the clunkiness of hypertext, and missed my dumb terminal
 > ala "War Games" Matthew Broderick sort of experience with online.
 > 
 > I still miss it, which is why I'm experimenting with BBS' again.
 > 
 > That's all.  Sorry for incohesiveness.  My brother put raw fish
 > in the garbage can.  My brother-in-law forgot to take the garbage out
 > to the street this morning (it's about 300 feet to the street) and
 > ran off to work.  So my brother calls me on the Nextel, wakes my
 > #ss up and I have to put on my robe and a pair of shoes, and
 > dodging Florida black bears and water moccassins to take out
 > the damn garbage.
 > 
 > Needless to say, No, he will NOT be bumming a cigarette off of me tonight.

What's funny is this has gone full circle.  Back in the day most things were 
basic text with only information... no fancy graphics or crap, and this was 
done through gopher, BBSes, and other text-based medias.  Then the WWW took 
off and folks wanted graphics, word art, fancy crap which polluted and for 
me ruin the experience.

Now with RSS and ATOM feeds getting more popular and podcasts taking off, 
the graphics and eye candy are starting to wear thin for most.  People are 
getting back to the way it was 10 years ago with only information and none 
of the fancy stuff.

I did like gopher and hated to see it die at such a young age.

Sm

---
"Data is not information, Information is not knowledge, Knowledge is not
understanding, Understanding is not wisdom." -- Cliff Stoll
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